House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wants federal prosecutors in New York to probe media reports alleging that New York Communities for Change (NYCC) — “an organization with close tied [sic] to the now-defunct New York chapter of The Association of Community (ACORN) — engaged in fraud through its participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests.”
In a letter to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch, Issa writes that it is “alleged that NYCC solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters. I hope that your office will investigate these allegations to determine if they have any merit and prosecute any wrongdoing accordingly.”
Issa refers to a Fox News story referencing the allegations and a follow up story about the organization allegedly shredding paperwork after the initial piece.
“NYCC’s close relationship with ACRORN and its history of corruption is concerning in its own right, but even worse is NYCC’s fraudulent activity,” Issa wrote. “NYCC misused the money of hardworking union members in order to fund the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
Issa said last year that he was still interested in ACORN after it filed for bankruptcy but said jobs were his priority. No word on whether he’ll probe George Soros’ connections to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Late update: Jean Sassine, treasurer and board member of New York Communities for Change, issued this statement:
Let’s be clear on the facts: no one at NYCC had anything to do with the conceiving, founding or funding of Occupy Wall Street. We work on a daily basis to fight against illegal foreclosures and to keep the Millionaires Tax in place, so that $5 billion in social services don’t get gutted for the poor. We are allies and work with Occupy Wall Street on occasion and we certainly understand, at the deepest level, its call for economic justice for the 99 Percent of Americans struggling to survive. We know it’s hard for billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch and the 1 percent to comprehend how a movement like Occupy came into fruition, but we doubt Murdoch or Roger Ailes have ever been in a similar position as the millions of American families who are out of work and fed up with our political process.
Now FOX is wasting American taxpayer money pursuing this even further. FOX and Murdoch — the man who allowed his staff to hack into the private lives of people all over the world — have enlisted Wall Street’s chief political benefactor, biggest defender and multi-millionaire, Republican hatchet man Darrell Issa – to further the network’s One percent political agenda. — Issa, who famously declared that he wanted to hold a hearing a week for forty weeks when he took over the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has largely come up empty and is now scraping the bottom of the barrel, wasting Americans taxpayer money chasing baseless rumors fed to him by Rupert Murdoch. It’s unfortunate but we expect nothing less from Issa, Murdoch and FOX.
